A fuzzy-logic based trade-off analysis for aggregating flexibility measures of FMSs

Manufacturing flexibility is a complex and multidimensional concept which lacks a universally accepted set of measures and remains a sought after attribute of flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs). Instead of focusing on the measurement of key characteristics of system flexibility, the paper applies a fuzzy logic based technique to identify the trade-off relationships among flexibility measures and establish an aggregation hierarchy for ranking alternative FMS systems.